I am walking along the wide leafy green street of suburban Chicago when the sign outside a grey building catches my eye. I cannot remember its exact words, but it may as well have said ‘we will have the land once called Palestine, whatever it takes’. I feel ill, as if all the air has [read more ...]
There is a quality of person that walks our Earth that can only be properly described as a New Yorker. He – for he is surely a he – is not the brash cab driver of times past, nor the wise crackin’ nanny from Queens (who is surely a she). This ‘he’, this man, stands [read more ...]
Just before I left San Francisco I had lunch with three women I had not previously met. Two of us had been on a writers’ panel together at the library, one an author, the other the panel host; the third was a friend of the author. We were well into delicious salads and, in my [read more ...]
Yesterday I had lunch with three women. We’d been on a writers’ panel together in San Francisco, sharing our hard earned experiences with a roomful of devoted writers. Lunch, delicious, drew to a close and the bill landed on the table. I watched with amusement as the three spent about 15 minutes discussing the tip, [read more ...]
It’s over. I have two days left in the United States of America, three if you count the 12 hours I will spend in a train on Wednesday returning from San Francisco to LA, four if you count the day I spend in US air space getting from LA to JFK in NYC, airport to [read more ...]
Meet Claire. Claire and I met in Flagstaff, a town in the Arizona desert which is noteworthy for several reasons: * it’s a gateway to Grand Canyon * it is higher than any mountain east of the Mississippi * its cute, fabulously cheap hostel gave me bedbugs (upside: as well as my money back). Claire [read more ...]
Squirrels, apparently, are the most dangerous animals in Grand Canyon National Park. They are also the mostly likely to approach humans, particularly those of us who produce snacks from our packs. If you consider plague and rabies cute, pat a squirrel. I don’t and I didn’t. Instead, whether three feet or three miles into the [read more ...]
Apparently, the world has been caught in a media storm while I’ve been resting in the peace of Grand Canyon; pictures surfacing of a crowd of Taliban men cheering the execution of a young woman who may or may not have been involved with either or both of her executioners. Before we elevate our holy [read more ...]
It is Christmas 2008. My grandson is six years old and tearing into his gifts, paying no attention to the cards and strewing paper all over the floor. A card flies by and I pick it up. It is from my mother, his great grandmother, and on the front is a picture of Uluru, the [read more ...]
I have lapped the USA. Returned to my point of departure on the train. Run the borders: Mexico to the south, Canada to the north, the oceans east and west. I have ridden the night plains and the dawn mountains, the swamplands, the forests and the foodbowl. The white moon above has rolled along with [read more ...]